The situation in Russia, in 1869, seemed to call for renewed application of this principle; it was an “internal affair.” The expulsion of the Jews was justified on the basis of a tsarist edict, a ukase, dating back to 1825, that barred Jews from living within seven and one half miles (fifty versts) of any of Russia’s borders. Since those borders had shifted on account of the 1856 Paris treaty that ended the Crimean War, tens of thousands of Jewish families now lived in the affected area, which included the city of Kishinev (now Chis¸inaˇu), later the site of infamous anti-Jewish pogroms. However cruel the forced relocation of those Jews might be, it accorded with Russian law.3
America’s Jews, incensed at Russia’s discriminatory laws and moved by the plight of their persecuted coreligionists, nevertheless demanded action. They had not previously taken the lead in responding to persecutions of Jews abroad. Powerful Jews in Western Europe, most notably England’s Sir Moses Montefiore, typically hastened to the defense of stricken Jews while American Jews cheered from afar. Now, having grown in numbers and gained in political experience, leaders of B’nai B’rith’s Elijah Lodge in Washington, led by Grant’s confidant Simon Wolf, resolved to act on their own. Working quickly, the lodge drew up an eloquently worded document that detailed the “cruel persecution” that Jews were experiencing in “primitive Russia,” offered praise for Tsar Alexander II’s otherwise “liberal and enlightened views,” blamed “an ignorant and cruel peasantry” for the Jews’ plight, and, most important, set forth a bold and innovative rationale explaining why, notwithstanding the traditional reluctance to interfere with the internal affairs of other nations, human rights considerations now mandated decisive government action:
[A]lthough we well know, that it is against the policy of this Government to interfere with the internal affairs of any other people, yet there are crimes committed in the name of municipal jurisdiction, that by their nature and magnitude become offences against humanity, and thus are violations and infractions of the law of nations.…
[I]t will be a hopeless task to endeavor to permanently unite the nations of the Earth in bonds of amity, unless one universal law of humanity is recognized. It is exacted in time of war of an enemy—is it foreign to the genius of our enlightened institutions to urge it on a friendly power in time of peace …?
Is it too much to ask the United States to proclaim that henceforth it shall be an integral part of her intercourse with the nations, that international law recognizes only, as members of the family of nations those people who are guided by the unchangeable laws of a common humanity[?]
In a face-to-face meeting with President Grant, just three days after word of the persecutions reached the newspapers, Wolf and other leading Jews presented him with this forceful appeal and asked him “to represent to the Russian Government that this subject has been brought to the notice of the President of the United States” in the hope that he might use his influence to have the decision to expel the Jews “revoked or modified.”4
Grant had every reason to decline this request. Russia, he knew, had stood by the United States during the Civil War and had sold Alaska to the United States on generous terms in 1867. It made little sense, from the perspective of American interests, to place that country’s friendship with the United States at risk, especially at a time when tensions with England already ran high. The policy of non-entanglement in the internal affairs of other nations, moreover, had served America well. Even without the need to worry about foreign condemnations of American slavery, why change a policy that worked?
As if these two arguments were not persuasive enough, Grant surely knew that any comment on Russia’s actions would inevitably renew discussion of his own actions, just seven years before, that uncomfortably resembled those of the Russians. Had not he, too, expelled “Jews as a class”? Indeed, the very language subsequently employed by the American diplomat and scholar Eugene Schuyler (translator of Turgenev and Tolstoy) to justify Russia’s actions to his superiors at the State Department closely resembled the language and the rationale of General Orders No. 11. “The Jews who lived immediately on the frontier,” the diplomat explained, “had little to lose and made large gains by smuggling goods into Russia, and by smuggling conscripts and refugees out of Russia. Until the last year there was an immense smuggling trade across this large frontier, which was entirely in the hands of Jews.” “As a class,” he reported, “they were thought to be lawbreakers and smugglers.”5a
Notwithstanding these persuasive arguments for nonaction, Grant, increasingly sensitive to the rights of individuals and likely seeking to atone for the blot on his record that General Orders No. 11 represented, acted swiftly and decisively. “It is too late, in this age of enlightenment, to persecute any one on account of race, color or religion,” he exclaimed. “He would take great pleasure,” he said, “in being the medium to cause a revocation of the ukase, and would lay the appeal before the Cabinet about to assemble.” He subsequently decided, according to the diary of Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, “that the subject be mentioned to the Russian minister with the expression of the hope that the Russian government may not find itself obliged to resort to such measures.”6
Hamilton Fish did his best to thwart Grant’s humanitarian impulse. He feared the implications of interference in Russia’s internal affairs and was unmoved by B’nai B’rith’s argument that human rights trumped long-standing diplomatic protocols. Indeed, Fish initially claimed—based on information he naively accepted from the Russian minister—that Jews in Russia “now enjoy all the civil and political privileges allowed to other subjects of whatever religious faith” and that the expulsion report rested “upon some misapprehension of fact, or upon some exaggeration of a less important incident.” When updated information from Europe and behind-the-scenes interventions from Jewish leaders gave the lie to that excuse, Fish ordered the American ambassador to “make urgent but careful inquiry” into the matter. Beyond publishing the resulting inquiry, which was America’s first official state paper concerning the situation and treatment of Jews in Russia, however, Fish did nothing. Neither he nor Grant intervened directly with the Russian authorities on Jews’ behalf.7
That, in the end, hardly mattered. The B’nai B’rith petition and Grant’s sympathetic response to it received wide publicity and were quoted by diplomats in their dispatches home. The Russian authorities postponed and then revoked their expulsion order, perhaps, as some claim, because it was too difficult to carry out logistically and would have damaged the local economy, but perhaps, too, because they feared an international outcry. Whatever the case, Americans understandably credited their own leaders, and especially Ulysses S. Grant, for achieving this happy result. Simon Wolf declared that the president’s actions “answered the query of politicians as to whether he fosters prejudice against the Jews.” The New York World found it “pleasing to see how different President Grant is from that General Grant who issued … an order suddenly exiling all the Jews from their homes within the territory occupied by his armies.”8
The episode not only improved Grant’s image, it also improved the image of Jews in the eyes of their neighbors. By joining with Grant in appealing to high-minded human rights claims, Jews looked to be shaping an America that explicitly promoted “one universal law of humanity.” Long before such ideas gained currency in international circles, they were helping to bring about a key change in U.S. foreign policy, justifying interference in the internal affairs of other countries when human rights were at stake. In so doing, Jews distanced themselves from the immigrant peddlers and smugglers that Grant and so many others had once disdained. They fashioned themselves instead as champions of freedom, self-confident advocates of the rights of individuals, and defenders of persecuted Jews around the world.
Persecutions of Jews unfortunately continued, forcing American Jewish leaders to approach Grant again, this time on behalf of Jews in Romania. News of atrocities committed against Jews in that country reached the Jewish and non-Jewi
sh press in the late 1860s, even before Grant’s ascension to power. “Terrible Persecution of the Jews in Roumania,” a New York Times headline screamed on June 14, 1867. The story, reprinted from the London Times and based on a telegram received from a Jewish eyewitness in the city of Jassy [now Iaşi], the former capital of Moldavia [Moldova], outraged Jews and non-Jews alike:
In all the streets nothing is heard but the shrieks of the women and the weeping of the children of the banished Jews. We continue to be hunted down on all sides. The aged and the sick are bound in chains and dragged to some unknown destination. All our prayers for the protection of the law are rejected by the authorities. We are declared to be outlaws. The mobs are encouraged to exterminate us. It is only by means of prompt and efficacious succor that we can be saved from a frightful fate. Our eyes are turned to you our illustrious co-religionists. Save, save your wretched brethren of Moldavia!9
Moldavia, which had united with Walachia in 1859 to form what became Romania, housed Jewish communities that dated far back in time. In the nineteenth century, these areas also attracted significant numbers of Jewish newcomers, especially during the era of Russian control, for immigration was easy and the opportunities for middle-class merchants seemed plentiful. Urbanization, when it occurred, brought with it the promise of further economic opportunity, but economic rivalries and religious hatred regularly conspired to deny Jews equality. In 1866, a new conservative regime took power that introduced or restored measures that legalized discrimination against the country’s Jews, limiting where they could live, denying them the right to own land, and restricting the kinds of occupations that they could hold. Article 7 of the country’s new constitution stated unambiguously that Romanian citizenship may be acquired by Christians only. Jews, even when native born, were deemed stateless foreigners (one minister called them a “social plague”). The regime forcibly deported hundreds of Jews and encouraged mob violence against thousands of others. One politician openly suggested that the best solution to the problem posed by Jews was to “drown them in the Danube.”10
In early June 1870, American newspapers reported that “fearful massacres” of Jews were taking place all over Romania. The San Francisco Bulletin put the figure of those murdered at “a thousand men, women and children”; others estimated the toll to be much higher. The French Alliance israélite universelle, which kept close watch on Romanian Jewish affairs, dispatched hundreds of telegrams to Jewish communities around the world seeking support for the persecuted victims. “The fury of the population is terrible,” it quoted one Jewish eyewitness as declaring. “We implore your aid.” The New York Times, comparing the violence to the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572 that had decimated France’s Huguenot population, called upon the U.S. government to “do all in its power to check the hideous massacre.” Meanwhile “leading Israelites” from around the country “arouse[d] their representatives in Congress to do all they can,” and similar messages poured into the White House. Simon Wolf was reported to be “actively engaged all day in Executive and legislative circles” seeking intercession on behalf of Romanian Jews.11
Grant, in keeping with his new foreign policy priorities, moved swiftly. Paying a personal visit to the State Department, he instructed Hamilton Fish “to obtain full and reliable information in relation to this alleged massacre, and in the meantime to do all in his power to have the [neighboring] Turkish government stop such persecution.” It was reliably reported that, with Grant’s approval, the State Department would soon appoint “Adolphe Buchner, who is an Israelite,” to serve as consul at Bucharest.12
Buchner, a resident of Bucharest and member of a significant Jewish family there, had previously served as secretary to the U.S. consul and maintained ties to the leaders of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Months earlier, when the consulship became vacant, he sought their aid in his quest to be made consul himself “in view of the moral influence that the nomination of a Hebrew as American Consul here might exercise upon the minds of our authorities.” Now, with Jews and others clamoring for action, and Grant eager to prove himself a friend of human rights causes generally, especially those involving Jews, Wolf pushed Buchner’s nomination onto the diplomatic fast track.13
Then, at the last moment, it was derailed. Owing to the astonishing intervention of a colorful rabbi named Haim Zvi Sneersohn, a descendant of the founder of the Hasidic movement today known as Chabad-Lubavitch, Grant made a far more daring appointment, subsequently described (with pardonable exaggeration) as “unique in diplomatic history.” He appointed an American Jewish leader to be U.S. consul to Romania, and, recalling his approach to Indian affairs, included among the consul’s duties “missionary work” for the benefit of Jews “laboring under severe oppression.”14
Rabbi Haim Zvi Sneersohn,b in addition to being the great-grandson of Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the storied and much-revered founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Russia, was also the grandson of that family’s most notorious black sheep, the founder’s emotionally troubled son, Moshe, who to the movement’s great embarrassment converted to Christianity in 1820. Perhaps to escape the stigma of what was then seen as the ultimate form of religious betrayal, Moshe’s wife, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, including ten-year-old Haim Zvi, moved to the land of Israel in 1843–44 to begin life anew.15
From a young age, Haim Zvi displayed oratorical and linguistic skills, as well as a significant wanderlust, so from the age of eighteen he was made an emissary of Kollel Chabad and other Jewish philanthropic institutions in the land of Israel, raising money, among other things, for the shelters for the needy (Batei Mahase) that today house Yeshivat HaKotel in Jerusalem. Sneersohn’s primary job was to collect funds and transmit them homeward, but as part of his fund-raising travels he played many other roles as well: teacher, preacher, pastor, missionary, diplomat, and more. He was especially keen to promote the return of Jews to the land of Israel in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah; like many Chabad followers, he expected redemption to occur imminently. But unlike today’s Chabad emissaries, the so-called rebbe’s army, he had no fixed base. His far-flung expeditions took him to different communities—including Syria, Egypt, Persia, Australia, England, and Romania—where he learned to inspire Jews and non-Jews alike.16
In 1869, apparently on his own initiative, the then thirty-five-year-old rabbi came to the United States. His goals were to raise funds through a nationwide lecture tour and to publicize his views on the coming redemption (“the finger of God points out to us that the day is not far distant when the grand deliverance will take place”). He also carried with him a political agenda: to lobby for the replacement of the American consul in Jerusalem, Victor Beauboucher. A Frenchman, wounded fighting for the Union in the Civil War, Beauboucher was the only Jerusalem consul in American history who was not himself a U.S. citizen. He had made himself exceedingly unpopular with Palestine’s Jews when he utilized the power of his office to assist Protestant missionaries in their heavy-handed but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to entice a young Jewish orphan named Sarah Steinberg to take up the Protestant faith adopted by her closest relatives. Sneersohn, and many of the community’s Jews, wanted him removed.17
Rabbi Haim Zvi Sneersohn (illustration credit ill.27)
Sneersohn knew how to attract attention to his cause. Rather than dressing in traditional East European Hasidic clothing (which might have been exotic enough), he always appeared in public looking “very imposing and venerable” bedecked in an “Oriental costume” consisting of a “rich robe of silk, a white damask surplice, a fez, and a splendid Persian shawl fastened about his waist.” People paid to see a man like that lecture in English. His addresses attracted Jews and Christians alike.18
Arriving in Washington, Sneersohn lectured twice on Jews in the Holy Land, with “members of the President’s family … and of Congress” in attendance. He also met with the secretary of state to talk about the Jerusalem consulate. Then, on April 20, just we
eks after the inauguration, he called upon President Grant in the White House, barging in, according to a widely reprinted account from Washington’s National Intelligencer, “on the informal reception given in his chair by the President to many whom he was favoring with a few words of private conversation.” The president “rose courteously to receive the Rabbi,” and Sneersohn responded with the traditional blessing for rulers: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe who has given of His glory to human beings.” He then carried out his mission, imploring Grant “to turn your attention to the deplorable condition of my brethren in the Orient, that the principles of the Government may be truly embodied in its representatives abroad”—a long-winded way of asking him to replace Beauboucher (who, unbeknownst to him, was ailing and seeking transfer to “a post in Italy, Spain or Germany”). He also asked Grant to “enable my brethren in the Holy Land in the hour of need to seek refuge under the Stars and Stripes.” The president, described as “deeply moved by the Rabbi’s sincere and feeling words,” asked several questions and then, in his characteristically laconic way, announced, “I shall look into this matter with care.” Sneersohn, in response, offered a “fervent prayer” for Grant and his family, and departed. At least so far as the National Intelligencer was concerned, he had succeeded in his mission. “The American Government can not refuse so humble a request,” the newspaper concluded. “[T]he Israelites … shall have in the American consulate at Jerusalem an advocate.”19
Sneersohn, having accomplished his mission and become something of a media sensation, proceeded across the United States, lecturing and attracting notice wherever he went. By the time news of the Romanian atrocities burst into the press, he had reached San Francisco, taking advantage of the then newly completed transcontinental railroad, which, within a decade, would transform that city into the second-largest Jewish community in the United States. His host and companion in San Francisco was Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, scion of a distinguished Sephardic family, a lawyer, journalist, and exceptional orator who had studied under the guidance of Stephen A. Douglas, had served as political editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and (not least important) was a boyhood friend of Simon Wolf. Peixotto, at thirty-five, was the same age as the rabbi and had already accumulated a distinguished record of communal activism as national president (“Grand Saar”) of B’nai B’rith, leader of Tifereth Israel Congregation, and founder of the pioneering Cleveland Jewish Orphan Home. Now, under Sneersohn’s careful prodding, he decided to become his people’s savior as well.20
When General Grant Expelled the Jews Page 11